This is amazing! Well, the game itself – a hobbled, ASCII-esque version of Tetris with only two block types – isn’t amazing, but the fact that it comprises just 140 bytes is. 140 bytes in this instance also means 140 characters, so essentially this is a working game you could post on Twitter.
Play it in your browser here, then come back here and marvel that the below is all that’s involved:

That’s Javascript, so it’s calling up various higher functions and… oh, I’m too stupid to understand, but I know that it’s damned clever. Admittedly there does appear to be some cheating going on, in that input and display are handled separately: you can comb through the code and discussion here.

It’s part of a project/contest called 140byt.es, which has also generated a similarly svelte and smart take on Snake.

Sadly it’s just the update function that’s 140 bytes. The whole javascript source for the code that includes the important stuff like reading the keyboard, and displaying stuff on screen is closer to 1kb.

I can fit all of tetris into one character. Here it is:

“T”

(Don’t worry about all the stuff that’d actually make that work, it doesn’t count)

I, too, am enraged they did not include the Chrome code in the 140B! How dare they call it a 140B game if Windows 7 is more than 2 gigabyte?! Also, my BIOS is larger than 140B already?! I presume they also did not take into account that to actually transfer 140 characters over the internet you need more than 140B because of default information loss?

Whatever happened to the demoscene? They used to have 256byte game/demo competitions. With EVERYTHING in, no need for a JS interpreter, as they were straight assembly. Some really talented and creative people and projects there!

It’s not even Tetris! The fundamentals are not even there. The game doesn’t have the long I-block tetrimino. Without that you can’t clear 4 lines. Clearing 4 lines is called a Tetris. Also, all the blocks aren’t made up of 4 smaller blocks.

I may play too much Tetris. Anyone want to come over & play on my Tetris arcade cabinet?

There’s a “tetris friends” site that has 2 player scored rank scaling tetris so you can match up to same-caliber opponents online. Saw it on a league of legends stream the other night and spent a couple hours playing it. good stuff :)